The Great Hall at the Discovery Museum was abuzz with science and exciting conversations last Sunday as Newcastle university researchers, rare disease patients and members of the public gathered to celebrate the International Rare Disease Day.

With 104 attendees and 40 enthusiastic scientists, a wonderful panel debate on achievements and challenges in rare disease research, exciting hands on experiments (building a 3D skin model, DNA extraction, OA diagnosis, MRI scans, art installations and many more) and lovely food, we had an amazing day!

We’d like to thank all the presenters and attendees for participating in our event. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, and we hope to see you next year again!

Some feedback from our participants:

[The event] was great, no need for improvement!

Thank you for hosting such an amazing event!

Loved each and every bit.

Thank you for recommending this, I had a really great time! […] Everyone there was really nice and the activities were so fun

Many thanks to you all for giving your weekend to educate and entertain us.

We’re organising Genetics Matters again! Genetics Matters is a free annual event showcasing rare disease and genetic research at Newcastle, with hands-on experiments, laboratory demonstrations, scientist talks and free refreshments.

We’ll be at the Discovery Museum on the 25th of February, join us at http://tinyurl.com/3f4hwkks

Our annual International Rare Disease Day event is back. In 2024 it will be bigger and better, with more research tables, more satellite events and really interesting talks. Watch this space!

The “Smart advances in ageing research” workshop was co-organised by Dr Kasia Pirog and Dr Tony Sorial and sponsored by The Dunhill Medical Trust and The Wellcome Trust. The event took place at The Catalyst, the home of the National Innovation Centre for Ageing and National Innovation Centre for Data. Participants included osteoarthritis patients from the DMT Working Group and from Voice Global, and members of the public.

The event consisted of 3 talks highlighting recent technology assisted achievements in aging research, by Dr Sorial (on developing a tissue engineered model to assist with personalised medicine approaches to OA treatment), Dr Pirog (on using genetic engineering to investigate the role of asporin in OA progression and uncover potential treatments), and a key note lecture by Prof Farshid Guilak from Washington University on future of osteoarthritis treatments. The presentations were followed by great discussion and round table demonstrations of wearables to measure mobility and activity in the older population (Dr Pantall’s lab), AI interventions for frailty in care homes and private homes (OpenLab), tissue engineering approaches to cartilage modelling (Pirog and Sorial groups), mouse models of cartilage ageing and disease (Pirog lab) and spatial transcriptomics to investigate cartilage degeneration (Young lab). Thank you everyone for participating!

Come see us at the Wellcome Trust and Dunhill Medical Trust funded Osteoarthritis information day, co-organised by Dr Tony Sorial and Dr Kasia Pirog, with a keynote talk by Prof Farshid Guilak, discussing recent advances in the study of age related musculoskeletal conditions.

For details of how to register, please see the poster below.

It’s the official launch of the Black Box³ project!

BLACK BOX³: Unboxing invites artists and scientists at Northumbria University to present short 10-minute ‘unboxing’ talks: to share their research (or reveal their wildest research dreams), invite questions and solicit interdisciplinary relationships. The event includes talks and film screenings from two existing collaborative projects between the Arts and Applied Sciences at Northumbria University, ‘unboxing’ talks, an opportunity for discussion over a light lunch and coffee (provided), and a joint working session to establish an interdisciplinary film community at Northumbria where work can be shared through the BLACK BOX screening programme.

For more information, visit: https://www.cnosat10.com/black-box-3

Here’s the program of the unboxing event:

We hosted summer work experience students at the Centre for Life over the past two weeks, together with Diaz-Manera, Elliot, Munkley, and Veltman labs. It was really good fun, and great to see so much enthusiasm for science!

Thank you to all the labs for hosting the students, we hope you enjoyed it too.

Today we were looking back at the 7 years of Genetics Matters and recording a little soundbite to say thank you to the Tilly Hale Awards for continuing to support Genetics Matters over the years. It is a great event that brings together scientists, health care professionals, rare disease patients and members of the public, and raises awareness of rare disease research in Newcastle.

Here’s a collage of our event’s posters to date:

We had 100 people with us yesterday, despite Newcastle United playing at Wembley, raising awareness of rare diseases and rare disease research, chatting about science, performing experiments, and discussing aspects of medical research at Newcastle.

The room was buzzing with interesting conversation, and we have already had a lot of good feedback. Thank you to all the presenters and scientists, patient organisations and patients for participating, and thank you to everyone for coming and spending a Sunday afternoon with us. We really enjoyed the event and we hope that you did too.

See you next year!

Photos by Rachel Richman